Dog Eat Dog (2016)

***Quirky black comedy/crime thriller about three hardcore thugs in Cleveland***

Directed by the renowned Paul Schrader, this stars Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe & Christopher Matthew Cook as the friends who are in-and-out of prison and get gigs from mafiosos, including one that smacks of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.

Schrader's films are often preoccupied with Christian religion and sexual obsession (porn, strip joints, prostitution, nudity, etc.), as verified by "Hardcore,” "Cat People" (1982) and "Auto Focus.” You can expect the same with "Dog Eat Dog" except that it mixes dark amusement with its urban drama, sleaze and crime thrills.

The movie's brutal, funny, ugly and quirky, but with a spiritual thread underneath it all. The three protagonists aren’t people you’d want to know and yet the film fleshes them out as human beings. For instance, Mad Dog (Dafoe) does something horrible, even unforgiveable, right out of the gate, but an hour later there’s an effective sequence that reveals how the crime has impacted him. He may be a rash overemotional fool with low-impulse control, but he’s not coldhearted.

Comparable movies include crime drama/thrillers from the ’90s like "Pulp Fiction,” "Mojave Moon" and "The Way of the Gun.” It's not on the level of "Pulp," but it's more entertaining than the other two. With Schrader, there’s more to the movie than meets the eye. Then again, it may be wannabe hip/edgy tripe, which is evidently how it struck most viewers (in light of its bad reputation). You make the call.

It runs 1h 33m and was shot Oct-Nov in Northeast Ohio, specifically Cleveland & Sheffield Lake, as well as Tampa, Florida for the restaurant scenes, street scenes and night skyline. Edward Bunker wrote the script based on the novel by Matthew Wilder.

GRADE: B/B-

_Dog Eat Dog_ ain't too trash, but it is pretty hard to believe that this came from the same dude who made _First Reformed_.

There is absolutely not so much as a single character in this that the audience can be expected to like, and though of course no filmmaker is obligated to make enjoyable characters, it is pretty tough to slog through a >90min runtime of back-to-back bastards.

_Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole._